What Now? with Trevor Noah - The Problem with Men, with Scott Galloway [VIDEO]

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Author/entrepreneur Scott Galloway joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss the economic and social crises plaguing the world (okay, only some of them). They contemplate why young men are failing, the masculinity crisis, how we can all help, and the importance of “garbage time”. They also debate the great American misdirect and how the billionaire class bought the 2024 election and got young people to pivot away from the Democratic party. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility. Savings on Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch, member FDIC, terms and more at applecard.com. I realized that if someone wasn't interested in me, someone didn't want to hire me, someone didn't want to invest in my company, I was going to be just fine. It didn't interested in me, someone didn't wanna hire me, someone didn't wanna invest in my company, I was gonna be just fine. It didn't get in the way. I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class president. I lost all three times based on my track record.

I decided to run for student body president, where I went on to wait for it, lose. But recognizing no is not the worst thing in the world is the key skill. And young men, because of a low entry, low risk entry into relationships with bots or AI sex dolls or you porn, have decided they no longer wanna tolerate no.

That is the key. But I would suggest, if you do get the no, don't say you're fine. You can say I felt rejected. You can say I felt like a loser. You can say I felt like I can't get a woman. You can say all these things, but I think it's important with anti-fragility to say, but I know I will be fine. I'm still here, there's still gonna be tomorrow, it's not the end of the world.

It should end, you're embarrassed and you feel stupid and all these things, but I love what you say, like you will be fine. This is What Now with Trevor Noah. Where are you coming in from, by the way? I have a place. I live in London, but I have a place here. You live in London? I do, yeah. What part of London?

Marlborough. Oh, what made live in London? I do, yeah. What part of London? Marlborough. Oh, what made you choose London? I grew up there. I'm in, around this stuff, I'm an influencer, not a decision maker. My wife told me we were moving five years ago. You sound like a great husband. Yeah. Well, I'm on the road a lot, so she says I don't get a vote.

Is your wife British? No, she's actually born in Poland, raised in Germany. Okay. Both my parents are initially from the UK, so I was one in Germany. Oh, nice. So you have the citizenship. I have dual. Okay. I was almost drafted when the Falkland Islands crisis broke out, which my mom was not anticipating.

Wow. Yeah. So your parents are British, but you were born in America. Born in America, yeah. And did your parents, are your parents still in America? My mom passed, my dad is in San Diego. Oh, so they stayed at the state. Oh yeah.

Does he still have his accent? Oh, it's a Scottish accent. Oh, he's a Scotsman. I love that. Yeah. If I could give my sons anything, it would be a Scottish accent. And what made your parents leave the UK? You know, they just wanted a better life.

I think a lot of people came here. They came here when they were 19 and 22, respectively respectively on a steamship from Glasgow and London respectively. Man, that's from Glasgow. Yeah. Well, Glasgow was a bad time. Where are you from? I'm from London, South London. Okay.

I came out in 2014. I've seen you there a while. So yeah, I came out when I was like 26, just about to turn 27. Yeah. I've been here 10 years now. But I'm thinking about what my exit is and when I talk to Trevor about it all the time. Oh, really? We should talk about that. Yeah. I'm just like, I'd like to have a foot in each world.

How can I build my career? So I'm like partially in LA, partially in London. Because I don't know how you feel, but I find London very like grounding and like grounded in a way that I haven't found in the US. As much as US has lots of opportunity and all of that. I'm just like. I think about that a lot. We should talk about it.

Yeah, we're talking about it. Are we recording? Yeah, we're recording. Welcome to the podcast. I'll be infinitely more charming and insightful then. So the way I would distill the difference between the US and Europe is the US is still the best place to make money

and Europe's the best place to spend it. So my crude reductive analysis on someone at your age is you're probably still in the making money part of your face. There's more opportunities that will bump off of you in the US than will in triple the time in Europe. But once you get to a point of economic security and you start thinking about lifestyle, Europe's a much more civilized same place. It's great for kids. Yeah, I've got three kids. You can get a much better bottle of wine for 10 bucks in Spain than you can anywhere in the US.

The people are friendly, but the reality is the opportunities and the risk capital just isn't there. For every company in the US, there's five million in venture capital. For every company in Europe, there's one million. So there's just not nearly the risk aggressiveness and the opportunities to make money in Europe as there are here. So I would say if you're, as I was when I was your age,

I was very economically focused. I wasn't trying to be a better person or find a family or change the world. I was trying to be rich. And America is absolutely the best place to establish economic trajectory. Once you have money, peace out to Europe. So this is actually a question I had for you. You know, I think when you say the name Scott Galloway, depending on who you say it to,

depending on where they've seen it, they have a completely different idea of you, which I actually love. Like, I know some people I said, Scott Galloway is gonna be on. Immediately some of my friends are like, man, finally, talk about masculinity. We're gonna talk about being men.

We gotta talk about, then I say to some of my friends, Scott Galloway's on, they're like, yes, talk to the man about capitalism. Talk to him about tax. You know, the business work, we to talk about being men. We've got to talk about it. Then I say to some of my friends, Scott Galloway is on. They're like, yes, talk to the man about capitalism. Talk to him about tax. You know, the business work. We've got to talk about it. And then you go, I'm on with Scott Galloway. They're like, oh man, please talk about like what's going on in America and what's happening

in the world. And the conversation organically started in where you are, where you see the world, where you see America. Do you think that what's happening in America is bad or do you think there almost needs to be a new, I don't know what to call it, a new world order, but like, if we think of a world without like borders the way we've drawn them, right? There used to be this general trajectory of people. They would work in a small town or live in a small town, grow up somewhere, move to the

big city to make money. And then generally they'd migrate back to the small town at some point. Now if you think about generations that came to America before them, they left the small town but on another continent. They've come to the big town that is America. They've made the money but now there's no moving back. Do you think like America's always just going to be about making money? And where do you think that leads us ultimately? I think what's going on is mostly bad. I think that leads us ultimately? I think what's going on is mostly bad. I think that there's a series of 80 year alliances

the post-World War II order that was based on trust, reciprocity of free trade, a general notion that America might get it wrong but our heart was in the right place and that we believed in rights, women's rights, civil rights, democracy. We would push back on autocrats. We would push back on war criminalsats, we would push back on war

criminals, and those alliances feel like, or that playbook feels like maybe we're taking it for granted has been ripped up. And just distinctive the morality of what I think is unforgivable surrendering to a murderous autocrat, put the morals aside and just talk about it economically. We have some of the best trading relationships and mutual reciprocity agreements with the largest economies in the world. We trade, we get along, we trust each other, we're willing to go arm in arm with each other. Let's look at Canada, largest undefended border in the world. That says something about our friendship. Open trade. They led us in the World War I. We followed them. They were in World War II before us training allied pilots.

I love the test of that wonderful, very emotional test of friendship that the Holocaust survivor said to Buffett when she was saying, who your real friend? She said, my test is I think where they hide me. That is a very puncturing question, right? And the reality is the 1979 hostage crisis, the Canadian embassy, they hit us. They hit six American diplomats, taking enormous personal risk

to get them out of the country, and then they stayed behind. And if they'd been caught, there's a good chance they would've been hanged by cranes. So the Canadians are willing to hide Americans. They are really true friends. And right now we're in a situation where they don't even understand

why we're trying to levy so much damage on their economy. So this post-World War II order that America has been sort of the leader in is being ripped up. And I don't think it's a good idea. The silver lining, I like to think what could go right. I struggle with anger and depression, so I consistently ask myself what could go right. What could go right is that possibly Europe is finally a union,

and that is they realize their rich uncle has lost his shit. There's no more trust fund. We cannot count on the $800 billion military umbrella and the economic, what I'll call, consistency and rational thinking of America. And they are talking about increasing their defense budget from 1.9% of GDP to 3%. And I think that stimulus, I think Europe actually coordinating because of the crisis around a lack of American leadership. The EU economy is $19 trillion.

Russia is $2 trillion. Russia is actually smaller than Canada. So there's no reason that if the EU gets shit together and starts coordinating and increasing their military budgets, they shouldn't be able to push back on Russia all on their own. And I think that stimulus and also the spillover of technology might actually create an upward spiral of economic growth in Europe. So I'd like to think the silver lining here is that some of the most advanced, civilized, democratic economies in the world and some of those robust economies are quite frankly

getting their shit together. Europe is a union for the first time in a long time. Some would argue that like that stimulus is part of the reason that we're in the problem we're in today. You know, building our economies around the military, spending our money and really getting things going by sort of getting wars going. And we've seen the effect that it has on an economy. You go to war, things start moving.

People start getting paid, things start getting made. But it's also war. But it's also war. And like scholars who know far more about this than I would, when I sit with them, they'll say to me, the US has always been very bad at actually understanding where Russia is versus where Russia says it is. And like one of the more salient examples was when Russia invaded Ukraine

and the tanks were falling apart in the mud, you remember that? And I remember analysts were shocked. They're like, well, these tanks are trash. And we didn't know that Russia, it doesn't look like Russia's infrastructure is as robust as we thought it was, the military infrastructure, right? And I couldn't help but think back to like the days of Gorbachev and all of these, like, not that I was there, but like when I, when I watched the documentaries and I read and I go, Russia's bluffed for so long and America has responded to that bluff for so long that

some people argue that it's just a war of bluff that never ends. And some would say, and I wouldn't be the one who says it, but I always like to consider these crazy ideas. Some would say, although Trump may be doing it in the wrong way, he's the person who's breaking this thing and it may lead to the right conclusion. How do you, how do you, you know, cause I know you're always thinking about the pros and the cons of everything. Do you think in a weird way, Trump might be doing the right thing in the wrong way that gets the world to a better place? Or do you think it was better for it to continue the way it was?

Yeah, I think on the whole, this is not good for America and the West. And I would just want to acknowledge that Eisenhower, a general, warned of the military industrial complex. He said, if you build a privatized shareholder gains based on a war machine, you're going to invent reasons to need the war machine. Having said that, I would argue that we on the left are sometimes naive about the fact that the moment some bad actors believe they can come for us and take our Netflix and our Nespresso away, they will. And that I actually am a bit of a war hawk and believe in a very strong defense.

I would also argue that just economically, two points, if you look at the most valuable companies in the world, whether it's Apple or Google, they're built on the backs of middle-class investments vis-a-vis the defense department. So GPS, which is what all mobile technology is based on, was initially a technology developed for ICBMs to put them in the pocket of Gorbachev.

DARPA, which is what the internet is built on, was made by an extraordinary investment meant to create a hubless communications network so we could communicate with each other after the Russians nuked us. So I would argue the military spending, for the most part in the US, has been, I would argue, a net positive.

Now that's not to say that it should anyway rationalize entry into Southeast Asia or into Iraq. These are disastrous positions. Now, as it relates to, let me go to Ukraine, I think of a manager as somebody who's just supposed to allocate capital to a greater return than your peer group. That's their job as managers. The job of the president, he's the biggest capital allocator in history. I would argue that the decision to allocate $60 billion a year to Ukraine is one of the best investments that has ever been made in the modern world. In exchange for allocate $60 billion a year to Ukraine is one of the best investments that has ever been made in the modern world.

In exchange for that $60 billion, to your point, we've kind of defanged the reputation of this supposedly ferocious army of Russia. It was five days and Kiev's fallen, right? That did not happen. We've taken out a third of their kinetic power, a third of their tanks and much of their Navy has been taken out.

Also, Russia is not a good actor towards us. Their intervention or introduction to our economy is to seal our IP and attack us from a cybersecurity. So them being focused on a failed war, a defenestration of their quote unquote ferociousness, and also sending a signal to the world that when the West binds together, we are a formidable fighting force. And all of this was without a single boot on the ground from America. In addition, that $60 billion a year, somewhere between 70% and 90% of it,

has come back to the U.S. to manufacture weapons, mostly in red states. So for about 8% of our military budget, we are keeping a bad actor occupied, reducing their military kinetic power, and sending a message to the world that the West is a formidable backer of even a small motivated army. I think this is the best money we have spent in a long time. Well, the thing is, Scott, I think the reason why what Trump is doing, from a geopolitical perspective, it's like a bad decision

if you think about the real politics. But to the regular American who's worried about the price of eggs, right? Who is just like, I'm worried about my employment, I'm worried about the schools my kids go to, I'm worried about the housing crisis that's ongoing, and they hear you sent how much to Ukraine? So how do we kind of speak to those people and get them to see the other perspective? I think it's through numbers and data. In terms of the very real, justifiable argument of like, there's a lot of problems here. We should be focusing all our capital here.

There's $75 billion in USA, the $60 billion in Ukraine, I would argue, is nothing but a weapon of mass distraction to get you to look away from the fact that the tax cuts that Trump is about to implement will increase our deficit by $800 billion. And the problem is Democrats don't speak in language that people can understand. This is what a deficit is. A deficit is a tax on you and your children in 10 to 30 years. It crowds out investment in technology and education. They create more growth. It crowds out our ability to and education that create more growth. It crowds out our ability to have programs for younger people. Basically our debt, our entire federal budget is moving towards senior citizens, 40% of

everything goes to people over the age of 65, interest on our debt in the military. So we can't make these forward-leaning investments that benefit you and you're going to have to pay it back, not me. I'll be dead by the time we run out of credibility and the treasury market fails. So all of this nonsense around let's not invest in Ukraine, USA, bring the money home, the Doja, $2.6 billion in savings so far,

according to the Wall Street Journal. If you want a 6X the savings from Doja, stop all subsidies to Tesla. So your job is to allocate capital. So I think the helicopter crash was DEI, Doja, stop all subsidies to Tesla. So your job is to allocate capital. So I think the helicopter crash was DEI, Doja, only male and female, the gulf of cheaper eggs. It's all a misdirect from the most irresponsible spending that we're about to incur, and that is you're

about to incur a future $800 billion tax every year such that I can make more money. That essentially America has become about our fiscal policies have become the following. Give me your credit card so I can be in the club doing rails and champagne and all you get to do is pay for it in the form of deficit. 60 billion is a decent amount of money, but it's nothing like the $800 billion a year we're going to lose in deficit spending. I think USAID is an amazing investment for people around the world to feel good about

America. I think pushing back on Russia for $60 billion a year and setting a signal that we are willing to sacrifice for democracies and repel murderous autocrats, I think that's an outstanding investment. $800 billion a year to give me a tax cut, bad idea. And all this other shit is just a misdirect to get you to look away from what is about to happen. And that is the biggest tax increase in history on you and your children. You know, listening to you speak, sometimes I think to myself, it's often easy for us

to focus on a problem in the moment and not ask ourselves who played what role in helping us get there. Right? focus on a problem in the moment and not ask ourselves who played what role in helping us get there. Right? I like that you brought up like the Democrats or progressives or left-leaning people. You know, that all saying a system isn't what it says it is, what it does. First part of it, when we talk about like what people could be doing and should be doing, when the Democrats had the power and they were able to do the things,

you can't help but look at the disparity between what Trump does, even illegally, let's call it with executive orders or beyond his power. He does the thing. Forget whether you like the man or not. He does the thing that he says he's going to do. The Democrats, when they've had the power that they had, didn't do the things that they say they're going to do. I mean, Biden was pretty significant about climate change and infrastructure. Yeah, this is in the term that they had with the power that they had. And that's true.

He has been one of the more significant presidents, funny enough. But like, what do you think they have missed there? Or what do you think we are missing in that side of the equation where there's even that meme that I think captures it perfectly, where it's like Democrats in power. We don't have enough power. Democrats out of power. We don't have enough power Democrats out of power We don't have enough power. You know what I mean? It's like is that a system that's broken or is it two sides that are playing a game very differently? It's a really thoughtful question

So when you hear Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren rail about billionaires and then we need a progressive tax structure Which I think is accurate. There's some nuance there in the sense that So I'll take you as an example, Trevor. I imagine you make an extraordinary living, but it's current income, meaning if you live is your home here, are you a New York resident? You're probably paying 50 or 52% tax rate. Yeah, 52% tax. Because the majority of your income is current income, and you make enough money to be in

the highest tax bracket. Now I've made my living starting and selling businesses, and now I make my living buying and selling stock. My tax rate, I'm a Florida resident now, has been 17% for the last 10 years. When I was- Damn, you're doing things wrong. Well, here's the thing, the people that get screwed are the super earners, and then your tax rate plummets

when you become a super owner. So when I was in my 30s and 40s making an extraordinary living as a consultant or as a writer, I was paying 30, 35, 45%. Once I became a super owner, my tax rate plummeted. And this has been a conspiracy that both the Democrats and the Republicans have fomented. And where they come together is the following. And that is democracy over the last 30 or 40 years in terms of rights has become solely a function of how rich you are.

Any woman in my life will have access to Mesa Pestrum. I could be in the deepest, reddest part of America, and if someone I know has an unwanted pregnancy, we're going to have no problem. If they start rounding up people and people say that can never happen in America, bullshit, it happened 80 years ago. We started rounding up the Japanese despite the fact

many of their children were serving in the European market fighting in our uniform. It could absolutely happen here. I think we're one economic shock away from, and who knows who the group will be. It might be Muslims, I don't know, or immigrants. I think it could get very ugly very fast. It's not a threat to me. I'm rich.

I can peace out to Dubai. You're male. You're white. Some of that. Some of that. Although, just to comment on that, I actually think in America, and this is a collective victory, and we should celebrate it, I think you would rather be more non-white or gay in America right now than poor. I mean, but they intersect.

The group most likely- There's a huge overlap. Yeah, the group most likely to be- But you would rather, say that line again, but you would rather be born in today's America. And this is a sign of our collective victory, but should also inform how we allocate resources and lift people up. Affirmative action should be based on color and that color should be green. And then you're going to help a lot of people of color.

Yes. 70 percent overlap, but here's the bottom line. 70 percent is significant. Trevor knows kids, you don't need any help. Right. Your kids in America today, and we should celebrate this, you'd rather be born non-white or gay than poor. The academic gap between black and white 60 years ago was double between rich and poor. It has flipped. But Scott, don't you think it's still concerning that 70% of the people who are poor are people of color?

But then the question is, how do we help them? Letting in the Taiwanese daughter of a billionaire is not diversity or affirmative action. I mean, no, I've never felt that's diversity. 60 years ago, there were 12 blacks at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined. That's a problem. Race-based affirmative action made sense.

This year, 60% of Harvard's freshman class identify as non-white. But here's the thing, 70% of those kids could come from upper income homes. So where should we go? I think most Republicans and almost all Democrats agree that some people are born with wins in their face that deserve a little bit of help.

By the way, I'm talking my own book. I got Pell grants. My mother lived and died a secretary. We were a generously upper, lower middle class. So I got unfair advantage in the form of Pell grants because I came from a household that was considered in the bottom quartile. I think that's where it should be now. But what we have in the U.S. is a conspiracy between the 1% and any administration that says, you don't need to worry, you don't need to speak up, you're the most powerful, but bitch about it to your friends

and wring your hands about what's going on, but you're not gonna come out and speak about it. You're not gonna refuse to go to his inauguration. You're not gonna refuse to give him a million bucks because this is the bottom line. The rich, right, are protected by the law, but they're not bound by it. And the poor in this country are bound by the law,

but not protected by it. Your rights and your democracy have never been better if you're in the 1%, but the whole point of American constitutionality and democracy is that it's meant to protect the bottom 50. Rich people don't need democracy. They don't need rights because they have money. I have more rights than any individual in history because I'm rich. And that's what America has become. It's become an operating system for transferring rights and money and democracy to the 1% at

the cost of the bottom 99. It is total bullshit. It is un-American and is the conspiracy emerging. And the reason why so many rich people are being quiet is because they're like me. They upload their W-2s to chat GPT. I'm going to save 930 grand this year if the Trump tax cuts go through. So stop, stop. It hurts so good.

That was a mouthful. I love it. Cause everything you're saying for me, you know, it's funny, you and I had this conversation, a lot of what you're saying now is what chairman Fred Hampton of the black Panthers said at some point, when he mobilized a coalition of poor people. The Rainbow Coalition. The Rainbow Coalition.

Martin Luther King, don't forget the white poor. He said, he said, when they tell us black and when they tell us white, and they're forgetting the thing that connects all of us, poor. And he said to that group of people in that church that he gathered, he said, hey, listen, you may call me the N-word, and you may say these things, but he said, but look at your bank balance and look at our bank balance. We have something in common common so I'm not your enemy. We're gonna continue this conversation right after this short break.

So like when we when we think about that like when we think about politics through that lens, did it fall apart when America said that, you know, companies or money is speech, you know, like Citizens United, is that when it fell apart? Or was this like a gradual creep? Was this the inevitable conclusion of a place that was built on the idea of just money and the most money wins? I do want to say something. It's actually shown that when black people do acquire some wealth or high income, because of the communities we're connected to, a disproportionate amount of that income

goes to other family members or friends. So black rich is actually very different from white rich. Oh yeah, for sure. If we talk about that black kid at Harvard or Princeton, maybe they are like one or two generations away from having someone who wasn't a college graduate. So I think we should be careful when we do talk about like the black affluent class who are apparently getting all these handouts.

Right, but if I'm hearing what Scott's saying, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, it's similar to there was an author that I spoke to once from the UK and she had this brilliant dissertation where she essentially said, I cannot wait for America to get over its race war to then realize that it's been a class war all along. But in America, specifically in America, you cannot separate the race from the class. But even when you get past it, let's say tomorrow we wipe away color, then the real game begins, then you'll be like, oh, wait a minute, now we see what was peeled away. And to your point, class has become a signifier of race and race has become a signifier of class. They're intertwined.

But even when you dismantle them, you will then realize that they're not actually, they just happen to be intertwined in this moment. Because I mean, I don't think the solve for all of this is black people, Asian people, whatever group to become rich. Or even the solve that we have for the white male crisis. Is that what you're saying though? I don't think that's what you're saying. Well, so if you, to be fair, to acknowledge the point.

So if you look at, um, there is still an economic apartheid in the United States. Yeah. Latino and black households have an average wealth of $20,000, white households $150,000. So it's hard not to acknowledge. And it's going to deepen with the great wealth transfer that's going to happen with the boomers. I think we have to acknowledge that when the boomer generation pass on their wealth, they're calling it the great wealth transfer. And that is going to deepen the inequity between black minority groups and white millennials in deep, in ways that was unprecedented.

There's some nuance though when you normalize it and when you compare black and Latino households with a college education to white households with a college education things get normalized or evened out. They don't, they're also more likely to live in a poorer neighborhood. The New York Times did a great story on affluent black people who had the same income. I think we're falling into the trap of the following. I think that the algorithms and the incumbents want us to be thinking it's black versus white, and it's the old, quite frankly.

Old people figured out they could bode themselves more money, and an average seven-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago, and the average person your age is 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. Every economic policy in America is meant to transfer wealth from the lower 99 to the top one and specifically from the young to the old. And who it impacts most is people of color and poor people. And the question is how do we move to a solution?

But Scott, what I wanted to say is I completely agree with you and I think what you have is a very fair reading, but I worry about us losing the nuance of the collective experience that certain groups in this country have that are different. That's why I say to me, it sounds like you're saying the same thing. That's what I'm saying. So when I look at it from two different places, it's almost like one is meditative and one is contemplative, right? What Scott is saying is, if you blindfolded said, we are going to help poor people in this country, more black people would be helped and more Latino groups would be helped because they are the people who are more poor. However,

tons of white people will be helped because there are tons of poor white people as well. So he's going what the promise of America is being neglected right now to people who are being left behind because we're moving to a society where it's more like an oligarchy than it is an actual meritocracy. It's all about the compounding of the money versus where your rights are in relation to you. And now what you're saying is even when we're building these systems, we mustn't forget who's been left behind. No, I just want to use a model. The University of California, which saved my ass, I think had the right approach. In 1997, they did away with race-based affirmative action,

and they went to what's called an adversity score. What is your background? Do you come from a single-parent household? Do you come from an economically strained household? Do you come from a household where someone is incarcerated? And by the way, the overlap... That's genius. The overlap is 70%. But what it also solves for is the fact that, quite frankly, Trevor, your kids should not get affirmative action. I agree. And I don't even have a kid, Christian, stop bullying.

This is what happens. The identity politics ends up enraging. How did we elect an insurrectionist as president? That's an honest question. And I think this is what happened. If you look at the groups that pivoted hardest from red, from blue to red, 2020 to 2024, it was three groups. It was Latinos who, in my opinion, gagged on the notion that because of their identity, they were expected to vote some one way. Mexican Americans in LA are much different and have different priorities than Cuban Americans in southern Florida. They pivoted the hardest. The second biggest pivot was people under the age of 30, who for the first time in the nation's history aren't doing as well as their parents were at 30.

That's never happened before. The third group that pivoted hardest to the right were women aged 45 to 64. And I believe, I believe that's the mothers of young men who are failing. This was supposed to be an election on or a referendum on women's rights. We thought that's what was going to save us for those of us who, who supported Vice President Harris that women's rights were going to step into the fold. Women's rights did not show up. It was not a big swing vote in this election.

What showed up quite frankly was struggling young people and their parents. Because if your kid is in the basement playing video games and vaping, you don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine. You don't care about transgender rights. That's a luxury rich Democrats get to have, not us. My kids aren't doing well. And so they voted for chaos and change. And this guy is so coarse, so unconventional,

so kind of non-bullshit, quite frankly, that you saw people pivot hard from blue to red. Okay, and now this is where I bring in the race stuff, right? Black women overwhelmingly voted for Vice President Harris. Whose sons in this country are doing the worst? Who is going from the school to prison pipeline? Who is disproportionately impacted by marijuana being

illegal, who's disproportionately interrupted by the carceral state, whether it's being stop and frisk, it is black men in this country. So why didn't black mothers do that? Because we care about our sons too. I know I care about my son. Why didn't they make the same decision? And their sons are also, if they're not in prison, they're downstairs playing video games as well. But the data you're missing is the following. Black women overwhelmingly voted for Vice President Harris, but more of them voted for Trump than they did in 2020. Oh yeah, I can tell you why that is. Why is that?

Some of the immigration sentiment really resonated. Really resonated. And Tressie talks about it all the time, the idea of black jobs. A lot of people laughed at Trump when he said that thing about black jobs. But for a lot of black women, they're like, I know the jobs he's talking about, the jobs that my brother used to do and my uncle did, what my father did. So I think the immigration sentiment also spoke to them and also VP Harris. They weren't some black women weren't fans of hers and they didn't feel like they should have to vote for her based on their identity. But I just I kind of rub up against the idea that this cohort of white women voted because they're worried about their sons, I think perhaps

they wanted to be protected under patriarchy, which is a very rational decision. And I don't I mean, I may have feelings about it, but I'd like they're probably siding with their husbands. That's that's a strange phenomena. And that is a lot of women will vote for what they perceive is best for their husbands and their sons. But we all thought, at least I thought, I thought Roe v. Wade being overturned, Roe v. Wade's another example. But these women can't have babies that shifted. They're not worried about getting an abortion, they're in menopause.

Fair enough. I'll give you another interesting stat where Trump is really brilliant. I'm fascinated by how he won. We're on a podcast, right? Trump flew into the Manosphere, crypto, rockets. Joe Rogan, he flew right into the Manosphere. He said, I am worried about young men, I relate to young men, I am coarse, aggressive.

This wasn't the women's referendum election, this was the testosterone election. And he flew right into the Manosphere, and quite frankly, it was brilliant. By him going on Rogan, 40 million video views, 15 million audio downloads, he got more attention in 90 minutes. If Kamala Harris wanted the same level of attention and exposure, she would have had to have gone on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox every night for three hours for two

weeks. She absolutely should have flown down to Austin. He saw the opportunity to appeal to struggling young men and the people concerned about them. And by the way, the struggles I talk about, I talk about struggling young men a lot, they're even more acute for young men of color. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended as a girl on a behavior adjusted basis. Same exact infraction in school. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended.

A black boy is five times as likely to be suspended. So we have an education system that is not only biased, in my opinion, against males. It's really biased against males. All these problems I talk about with men, whether it's suicide, opiate addiction, homelessness, it's especially acute among non-white men. But this is something, going back to your question, when did this happen? I feel like America are lack, and I'm an atheist,

so I'm not suggesting that church is the answer. But as a nation becomes wealthier, its reliance on a super being and church attendance goes down. But into that void fall, we still need answers, so we try and find idols. And the new Jesus Christ of our economy are technology innovators, tech billionaires, because this shit feels like magic, and these people create trillions in wealth, so we're fascinated by them. And I think where we came off the tracks is this idolatry of money. When I was a kid, my dad's boss had a

slightly bigger house, but we all went to the same country club, we all went to the same school. Money buys you everything from better healthcare to better schools to a much broader selection set of mates. So we have become obsessed, understandably, with money. The idolatry of the dollar and these tech innovators has gone berserk. And so the pursuit of the dollar, in my opinion, has crowded out almost all traditional character. When the wealthiest man in the world, and probably the most

admired man in the world, is making Nazi salutes, we normalize that shit. Why? Because he's really fucking rich. Look what money has done to us. Look what it's done. If you had a friend who was making Nazi salutes at parent-teacher conferences and was being sued by two women for so custody of their kids and you had heard from credible sources that they were addicted to ketamine,

wouldn't you move in and say, hey, boss, something's wrong here. But not if you're rich, not if you can put a rocket into space or make a shit ton of money with EVs. Money has perverted us. It has crowded all sense of character, of decency, of what it means to be a real man. We have decided that you can get away with anything as long as you're rich.

It's been a total, in my opinion, a lack of a moral failing. We used to admire cops. We used to admire people who had fidelity to their religion, we used to admire people who defended our country, we used to admire the sexiest man I remember thinking that I looked up to as my principal. He drove a 240Z, he smelled like Aqua Velva, he wore these cool coats with an elbow patch. He can't get laid now. Do you think a vice principal has any game in any city?

I mean, vice principal is a good job. I think some of my friends would take one. I'll tell you. It's so funny how so many of the things you're speaking about tie into all the conversations we've been having on this season of the podcast. So you talk about the dismantling of a community. We talked to Robert Putnam and how you can directly correlate communities falling apart with distrust in a government and people now voting against their best interests.

You talk about young men feeling isolated. We talked on the show about, you know, mass shooters and like the psychology behind it and like where these men are. You, Christiane, funny enough, you're the one who talked most about like the women voting for their sons. You kept on saying in the lead up to your election, you're like- You have kids? I have three kids. You have three kids, how old are they? I have a five-year-old, I have a 19-month-old and I have an eight-week-old. Oh, you're in the middle. I'm in the trenches.

Yeah. A son and two daughters. And I said, as I say on the show, I want my son to turn out great, I want my daughters to have great options for husbands. So I am actually invested. But that's what I mean. No, but Christiana kept on saying it. No joke. On the show, she kept on saying, I'm worried guys that these women are going to vote for their sons and it's not going to... And we were like, what do you mean?

But I'm looking at all of these things that you're tying together. And maybe there's two aspects of it I'd love to try and figure out with the help of your brain. First of all, I love that you talked about Trump and the paradox that he contains, right? In that he is at the same time as being someone who lies more than most human beings we've ever seen, he's also strangely authentic and no bullshits, right? It's a weird paradox. Do you think America for the most part has done a good job of being no bullshit with its people and itself so that people make the right decision? I'll give you an example.

Let's go back to Ukraine and maybe we can even talk about it through the lens of COVID a little bit. I would argue most Americans when they're told why America should invest in Ukraine, they're told it's because of morality. They're told we've got to help democracy. We've got to help countries stand tall. We've got to help. Why do you have U.S. aid? Because there's malaria in Africa. We've got to help fight these diseases. These poor Africans need our help. I think it would be a lot more honest and it would get to people more if you said, hey, hey, hey, you know why the things in America cost cheaper than most places in the world?

Is because we have so much soft power that those countries have to give it to us. So you see if you didn't live in America, this is how much you would pay for this, this is how much you would pay for that, this is how much you would pay for that. You know when you travel and your dollar can buy you anything, yeah, it's because we have the soft power. So you think we're helping Ukraine for nothing. Do you know who the largest exporter of grain is in the world? It's Ukraine.

Like, and I think sometimes America, like there's, there's been a lot of politicians who've made it like this morality argument, which in some ways is a little duplicitous, but I also understand it because it can come with that. The two things can coexist. But they also don't tell the truth. For instance, if you help, I have friends who their programs have been cut by USAID, but a lot of people don't realize. If you work in the business of tracking disease, and you work in vaccines, and you're around the world, not only are you helping, you're also doing two things. One, you're preventing mass migration.

Where do people migrate to when shit hits the fan? They're coming here. So it's like help them in their country before they come to your country. I don't see any politicians on the grand scale saying that. The other thing that I don't see them talking enough about is how it benefits America and its surveillance. You get the data.

People forget this. When America's helping the world track malaria or AIDS or whatever, you're also getting data on people and data is power. Data is information that you can use to help your markets. Do you think there's a world where that would help where people get a little more real saying to Americans, hey, actually, we're not just doing this because we're nice guys. We're doing this because it makes us powerful and rich. Yeah, 100%. I think, so for example, think of the world as 159 NFL teams, 159 countries.

Imagine you were the one team that got first round draft choices every year. You get to pick any player in the world because you're that one team. Everyone wants to come play for that team. That's America. The best and brightest all have one thing in common. They want to come here. I mean, it's just, and that's that soft power, that brand imagery that, okay, we make mistakes,

but our heart's in the right place. Whether it's the Peace Corps or USAID or our incredible products. Trump came along and basically saw an opportunity where Democrats and Republicans have been lying to us and afraid to tell people the truth and saying one thing in front of one audience, saying one thing in front of another.

And he just came along and came across as very authentic, was crude and was coarse. And we got so sick of this kind of starched vocabulary from our politicians and not doing anything. And also corruption on both sides. Speaker Amartya Pelosi has been trading stocks. That's just blatant corruption, right? And they would argue on the right right now that at least, yeah, this is corruption, but

we're just more brazen and less opaque about it. You've had the same corruption on the left for a long time, just through lobbyists and you know, how does- Yeah, the revolving door. How do these people get so wealthy? So look, I always like to offer a solution in terms of money and politics and some of the corruption. I believe we should go to a Singaporean model. I think every one of our representatives and senators

should make one and $3 million respectively. And there's absolutely zero tolerance for any special interest group, any speaking fees, can't go to work for a lobbyist, pay them a shit ton of money. Is this after you leave office, you can't go to lobbyist? Five years. Okay. Singapore model. They pay them a lot of money, but they say zero tolerance for corruption.

You cannot take campaign contributions from a military industrial complex. You cannot take speaking fees. You cannot go to work for Merck or Pfizer the day after you leave office. And they pay them a lot of money because the incentives right now are, if you're a senator and you're making what, $230,000 a year, you may not even be able to afford your home in Los Angeles and DC. So the incentives to do what everyone else is doing and find different ways to take money. The thing that's most disappointing about Washington is I have come into some level of economic security.

It's not that they're whores. I knew that. It's what cheap whores they are. How cheap are they? Well, look at the Menendez story. My mind, can I tell you, even like I say this as a South African, with my South African friends, we would talk about this. We were shocked when we found out that Senator Menendez did the thing that he did for like a Mercedes Benz C-Class. Not a lot of money. No, no, no. A C-Class. Not an S-Class.

Not an S-Class. Not a Maybach. I'm shocked at how many times America's corruption or even like lobbying and whatever comes up. And I can't believe how cheap the price is to buy America's soul from these people. It's the best ROI in the world. Give a million dollars to the Trump campaign. Pay 40 million for Melania Trump's shitty documentary.

Fine. Fine, right? The fastest growing expense line across big tech is an R&D, it is an AI, it's lobbying. If you were to give $25,000 to each of the hundred senators, two and a half million bucks, real money, I bet every time you go to Washington, one of 70 of the hundred would meet with you in person. And influence is a function of proximity. And it's not them, it's the system they're in. The person who raises the most money gets re-elected. So we've created an incentive system where they're basically paid

to be pay for play. For God sakes, pay them a lot of money. They're important, they work hard, they're mostly good people, but zero tolerance for corruption. Anyways, I think that there's just no getting around it. Money has washed over Washington, it's been weaponized, buy money, and we have an incentive system that is the following. More rights, more democracy as you get richer. And the reason the bottom 99 put up with it is that America's superpower is our optimism. Most kids believe and are taught you're going to be in the top 1%.

I can prove to every one of us the 99% of our children will not be in the top 1%. And so we put up with a level of income inequality and rights accruing to the 1% because God love us, most of us believe my lottery ticket, I know the lottery is dumb, but my baby, my ticket's a winner. My kid is in that 1%. And the whole idea of America is the majority of our laws, the majority of our economic programs are supposed to help the bottom 50. And we've creeped into the situation where it's really all about the top one. And then the bottom 99 get 210 notifications a day that they're not in the top one.

I mean, just think of what we're doing to the self-esteem of young people who are not making as much money. Rent's gone up, education's gone up. When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was 76%. This year it's 9. But if you don't get in, you get Instagrams from your friends all day showing the amazing parties they're experiencing at UCLA. Not only denying opportunity to young people, we're throwing in their face all of this wealth porn all day. And what do you know? We have the most anxious, obese, and depressed generation in history history. 50% of people my age feel good about America.

One in 10 Gen Z and millennials feel good about America. Something comes off the tracks with one of your kids, the whole world shrinks to that kid. And I'm again going to solutions here. Have you experienced that? Oh yeah, and you will too. It's just, that's what it means to have kids. The receipts for love is anxiety and grief.

Right? That's it. You know? Come on, Scott. You gotta give me some of the good things coming ahead. Don't scare me like this. I have finally a purpose. I'm ready to answer.

When I was Trevor, imagine a less handsome, less successful guy. All I wanted was more money, more experiences, more women, more money, more experiences, more women, but I never felt sated. I never, I just more fucking more. The first time I felt sated, and you will feel this way, there will be moments with your children where you think, okay, this is enough.

All my children are already enough. This is enough. Yeah. But something happens to them, and I mean none of this other shit matters. It doesn't mean anything. And for me, the unifying theory of everything and where I would like to see every policy perverse engineer is to one goal. And that is every person under the age of 40

should have a reasonable prospect of finding a mate. More third spaces, mandatory national service, more freshmen classes, vocational programming, more bars, more alcohol, quite frankly. I think young people need to drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. Let's give young people a chance to hook up. to drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. Let's give young people a chance to hook up.

Remote work, no. Tax companies that don't have in-person work. Fall in love. Give men a chance to demonstrate excellence. He's funny, he's kind, he smells nice. I will have sex with him. And then you have children and every economic policy should be the following. Two people who are working, minimum wage $25 an hour,

universal pre-K, get rid of long-term capital gains, tax deduction, mortgage interest rate, who owns stocks and homes? Me and Trevor. Who makes their money from salary and pays rent? Young people. Every policy in America with this prosperity should have one table stakes,

and that is two young people should have the ability to find each other, fall in love, and should they decide to have kids be able to afford it. Forty years ago, 60 percent of 30-year-olds had at least one child. Now it's 27 percent. It's because they don't want kids? No, it's because they can't afford them. If you decide, by the way, not to have kids, and you want to spend all that income on brunch

and safe parts, more power to you. But every young person should have the option to find purpose in their life and family. And they may decide not to do it. You don't have to have kids to be happy. But for God's sakes, if the most prosperous nation in the world can't offer people the prospect of meeting, falling in love, mating,

and having a reasonable standard of living, then none of this is working. I mean, I love this. I'm a Nigerian woman. I love weddings. Yeah. an Nigerian woman. I love weddings. I love the idea of a society making people get married. I've been trying to get this guy to get married for years. No, no, no, you have, you have.

Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now after this. You know, one of the first videos I saw of yours, a friend sent it to me and you were talking specifically about mates and mating and relationships and people. And you said something about, and I think you captured a deep feeling that not many people were speaking about. And funny enough, Christiana talks about it a lot. I think that's why she's such a fan of yours as well, is the idea of the purposelessness that can come with not having love or not having some sort of thrust in your life. And I saw this video of yours and I remember thinking, man, because someone was like, what do you think? This is crazy

or not? And I was like, I think this is brilliant. And also, it's so easy to prove in the most extreme circumstances, go to any Terra cell in the world. Like I'm talking like ISIS. What are they promising them as well? Wives. Women. And girlfriends. Yeah.

It's crazy that even on that level. In the afterlife, in paradise. But I'm saying even before the afterlife, they're saying we're going to go there and we're going to take women. We're going to get wives. We're going to get in some parts of the world where life is a little simpler, unfortunately, because it's harsher. You see that reality slap people in the face. My life is not going well.

I'm joining ISIS because ISIS didn't just tell me we're going to fight. They said we're going to fight to get a wife and a better life. Also the key, ISIS pay. Well, they pay some people. But the reason they got more, at point, they got more recruits than Al-Qaeda is because they paid you a bit more. ISIS pay. Well, they pay some people. But the reason they got more, at point, they got more recruits than al-Qaeda is because they paid you a bit more. Oh yeah, well, they were smart in the beginning. So it's just like, they gave them jobs. Yeah, so let's talk about the man side of this whole thing, because I love that you talk about it, the manosphere and the... before we even get

into that, I'd love to know, what do you think it is about you that has connected with a group that people would have argued wouldn't have connected with your views maybe like two years ago? Because if you wrote down on paper, Scott Galloway, this is what he believes in. He believes in basic incomes being this. He believes in healthcare. He believes in pre-care. He believes in... if somebody had drawn that up and then somebody had put the crypto bros and whatever we we want to call people, if we're putting them in a box, they would have said, oh, this person will never agree with that person. And yet you've made massive inroads with a lot of these young men who people have said wouldn't agree with their views.

And some young women, I'm a fan. Oh, no, no. Yeah. But I'm saying the men in particular, where people have just said no. Yeah. You know? But I'm saying the men in particular, where people have just said no. So what do you think it is that you are saying or what do you think it is that you are doing that is connecting you to them and what are other people missing about connecting to them?

Well, first of all, thank you. Your comments are generous. Look, I started talking about struggling young men five years ago. And real insight is when you state something that's obvious but people weren't thinking about. And the data is just overwhelming. And that is no group has ascended faster globally than women. And by the way, we should get do nothing to get in the way of this. More women are seeking tertiary education now globally than men. The number of women elected to parliament and democracy has doubled in the last 30 years. In the United States, women in urban metros under the age of 30 are making more money

than men. More single women own homes than men. Two in three women under the age of 30 are in a relationship, only one in three men. And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. What you have in the US is no group has fallen further faster than young men.

And it's for a variety of reasons. Biologically, their prefrontal cortex is 18 months behind a woman, so it doesn't catch up till 25. They just lack the executive function and the judgment. A big part is male abandonment. A lot of young men don't have the male involvement in their lives that is key. And even if you were to say that five years ago, the gag reflex was, well,

what are you saying? Mothers can't raise sons? No, I'm not saying that at all. But the research is pretty striking. When there's a single parent household, and let's be honest, 92% of the time it's the woman heading the household in a single parent home as mine was, the girl in the household has the same outcomes, same rate of college attendance, same rates of self-harm. In some, she's okay.

The boy, the moment he loses a male role model, becomes much more likely to kill himself, much more likely to be incarcerated. What it ends up, if you look at the data, is that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and mentally much weaker. We don't even want to acknowledge at one point, four or five years ago, you could get into trouble

by even claiming there was a difference amongst genders and young people. And if you were advocating for men, you were seen as a misogynist because so many unproductive voices filled this void with bullshit, thinly veiled misogyny. And what we have come to realize, and the dialogue's gotten a lot better, and it's mostly been led by mothers,

is that empathy is not a zero-sum game. We can still acknowledge the immense challenges women face. The moment you had kids, your average salary went to 73 cents on the dollar. Corporate America has still not figured out a way to maintain a woman's professional trajectory when she decides to use her ovaries. At the same time, young men, if you go into a morgue in the United States and there's

five people who died by suicide, four are men. If any other special interest group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, we'd weigh in with programs. And finally, we're starting to acknowledge that women cannot continue to flourish and our country cannot continue to flourish if young men are floundering. But Scott, don't you think it points to the fact that a lot of men don't care about men? Because I think about the women in my life, not just mothers, sisters, friends, we spend a lot of time worrying about the men and boys in our life.

Give the example of a single mother is just with her son. Yep. Now, if a mother is absent from a friend's life, other women will step in and fill that woman's role. Yep. Why aren't men saying, well, there's a single mother down the street or I have a family member that's single? Why aren't men stepping in?

Why don't men care about men and boys? It's a great point. If you were to reverse engineer when a boy comes off the tracks and becomes an unproductive man, it's the single point of failure is when he loses a male role model. We have the second most single parent homes in the world behind Sweden. And unfortunately, there's a taboo. If you were to get involved in a 15 year old's life, if you were to look around the office and say, single mother, say, I'm Trevor, I'm going to a game,

do you have a son who'd like to hang out with me? Because you're immediately suspected. You're immediately, quite frankly, Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us, and that is if a man wants to be involved in a boy's life, there's a bit of trepidation. Is there something wrong with him? Is he up to something really mendacious or awful? Could

he be possibly a pedophile? And this is such a tragedy because there are so many men with fraternal and fraternal love to give that maybe don't have kids of their own or maybe just are concerned or see the problem, who are willing to weigh in, and they're kind of told by society not to. And also, quite frankly, men are not stepping up. There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in the New York Big Sisters program as there are men applying to be big brothers.

In sum, if we want better men, we have to be better men. And you're exactly right. Men need to, there needs to be a zeitgeist in our society, family court, neighbors. The moment a boy no longer has a zeitgeist in our society, family court, neighbors. The moment a boy no longer has a male role model in his life, other men need to step into the void. My mom was really good at this. She made sure I'm still in contact with a couple of her ex-boyfriends.

There was a neighbor across the hall who used to come over with his girlfriend and take me horseback riding. I had men in my life and sometimes there are millions of young men right now, boys. The first male role model they have is a prison guard because men aren't stepping up. And I think of, I'm writing a book on masculinity, I think of concentric circles of masculinity. You take care of yourself. You're strong. You're economically viable. You're kind. You're a fucking monster. You have this unbelievable thing called superior bone structure, risk aggressiveness, this amazing substance called testosterone. You protect others, you take care of yourself.

Second circle out, you protect your family or a good provider. Next circle out, you take care of your community and your neighbors and you help other people. The ultimate expression of masculinity, in my view, is to take an irrational interest in the well-being of a child that's not yours. And not enough men are doing this. And it is so easy to find them. Can I tell you an idea I have? I wish more men made men who are bad fathers a pariah.

Like, if you have a friend that doesn't see his kid, he shouldn't be a friend. So can I say two things to this, right? I agree with the premise completely, but I think it is important just as you do on all issues. I think it's important to consider what the possible reasons can be. So on the one hand to what you're saying, I don't think like most men would not want to step in, etc. I don't think so, honestly. But I do know from speaking to men everywhere around the world, to what you're saying about like wealth porn, etc. Man, men, maybe because they imagine it or maybe because they're experiencing it a lot of men just feel like They've got a like double grind to even get the basic that first concentric circle to what you're saying has been crushed, right?

Okay, and and we've got to consider all the ways it's been crushed How have like the junk food companies crushed people's abilities to even like eat what they eat and stay healthy You start with people's food what they get access to you start with as you say like eat what they eat and stay healthy. You start with people's food, what they get access to. You start with, as you say, opportunities, income, being kicked out of school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think you've also got to consider what it's like

to be a young man where the dreams that you are sold and told don't come true because the system hasn't been set up, as you said, correctly, right? So I think, I honestly believe that. I think a lot of- And I feel a lot of compassion. I think any failed promise, whoever it's made to, I feel a lot of compassion for those people.

No, so I'm just saying in understanding that is like I go like for me as Trevor for instance, I have more time and I do make the time to be with friends or extended people's younger kids because they know me so they can trust me, right? But it's like, all right, take him go karting, take that one there, do that thing there. But I have the disposable income and I have the time income as well to be like, yeah, I can do that and I will do that. You know what I mean?

But I've seen for a lot of people, they go like, hey man, I can't even get my shit together. Who am I to, you know, I think that's the first one. The second one to what you were saying, you said that the thing that you thing that the proposal you had was? I think that you should become a social pariah if you don't look after your kids. You should become social.

No, because I, and I'll say this, and I've seen it in my community a lot, there are deadbeats and there is no consequence. Their friends still roll with them, their mothers still let them in their house, and they do not show up for their kids. And if a woman does not look after her child, if a woman even comes back to work early, I've had people DM me like, you had a baby

eight weeks ago, who's with the baby? Right? Like, I extensively think I'm doing a good thing. Do you know what I mean? And a woman who is not seen as a perfect mother is judged and vilified. Completely. I agree with you. Absent fathers, there is no social consequence. Completely. So I'm saying there should be a social consequence for not showing up for your son. So now this is, I agree with you 100% on this. And because of that, I was so fervently in that mode that I would like fight with people on this.

And then I came to realize something that maybe in this world we aren't addressing in the same way. There are many, many, many men who feel like they've been made a deadbeat dad. You get what I'm saying? There are many, many, many men who feel like they go, yo, this will, and I, this is me now anecdotally only, anecdotally. I know some men personally who were good men, wanted to be with their kids, you name it. And the woman in their life was like, you see, we broke up.

I'm going to make sure you never see these kids ever again. And I'm not saying this is all of them. So I'm not absolving them. I normally see the inverse. I think, and it's evolutionary biology. They say that, what's the saying that it's a mother's, baby's, father's maybe. A man is more likely to treat his sister's child with more love than he

is his mate's child or his wife's child. They've done studies on this because you know your sister's child is related to you. All that to say, I believe a man's relationship with his children, I don't know, this is not going to be a popular thing to say, is often connected to how he feels about the children's mother. Yes, no, but I agree with that. So for the most part, it's meant to be like, I split up with you, I see you less, he gets a second wife and he's a really good dad to those second set of kids. I see that all the time.

Less so do I see women. And I'm not saying that these villainous women don't exist who say, you can't see your kid. I think that's a cultural trope we've made up. No, no, no, no, I was just saying one. I was just saying one. Please, please, let me explain. I was giving you one, one that I know anecdotally. Please, please let me explain. I was giving you one, one that I know anecdotally. I'm not saying all of them. There's another one. And this

is again, the system that we've created. In America in particular, and in many other countries, you get divorced, you get broken up with whatever. Most of the time the system says the mother keeps the child, the man has to pay for the child to be with the mother. And that money is calculated strangely in some places. Some places, some people say it's very fair, some people say it's unfair, but it's strangely calculated. And now to what Scott was just saying, we live in a world where people already cannot afford the one house that they were promised, you know, in the American dream. 40 years ago, people could buy that house even on a

meager salary. You know, someone was putting out the numbers recently and they showed that like 40 years ago in somewhere like Philadelphia, you could buy a house, you could put down the down payment for a house with like a month's salary. There's no way you can do that now in that same Philadelphia, even because houses have gone up way, way, way faster than salaries have gone up, right?

So from that perspective alone, I think it is important to look at a place like Sweden. I remember going to Sweden and talking to, it was like basically they had like Dr. Fauci and I was asking him about like why Sweden has so many one-parent households, but so few of the problems. And he said, yes, but you're forgetting one thing and that is here in Sweden, first of all, you are not a pariah if you are single, right? That's the first thing.

And secondly, you're protected by the state. It makes a big difference when your relationship with the other person is not determined by your money. I just think some of this- So I think we're making a lot of excuses for men because mothers can't do the same thing. No, but I'm saying why, I'm not saying it's an excuse. You see, there's a difference between an excuse and an answer. I think an excuse is saying you've done it, but there was nothing we could have done and you're not wrong.

I'm not saying you're wrong or right. I'm just saying like what is the answer for this thing? And I think sometimes when we look at the socio-economic impacts of how in America specifically, how it sets it up when you are a dad that leaves the house, for many men it is difficult to continue being the dad the way you wanna be. Now how they deal with it is shitty. And also credit to women. I was also raised by a single mother and I've seen it and in our programs in Africa we still do the same thing.

We know you give the money to women because women know how to make that dollar go further. I think you're both right. One in six men three years post divorce have no contact with their children. Some of that is male abandonment. Some of it is just a total lack of character. You don't hear a lot about female abandonment because it just doesn't happen that much. At the same time, family court is also, you would argue, biased against men.

Sometimes it literally impoverishes them. Sometimes also the reality is in divorce there's a lot of emotion and my parents weaponized it and tried to convince me to hate the other. And you're just more inclined to believe the person you're living with that the other person is bad. So I think that we need to change the society and say, okay, regardless of how you feel about each other, you need to be supportive of each other for the kid's sake post divorce.

It's a nuanced argument with a lot of factors, but in general, there needs to be a zeitgeist in our society that the moment a boy loses a male role model, the community has to rally around that kid, the mother, the brothers, the uncles, and the men to say, we have to get men involved in his life. And that's not happening. It's not, you know, these, think about it, after school programs, not as many coaches anymore, right?

Yeah. They're not going into work. My first job was at Morgan Stanley. I got a lot of male mentorship. I was in a fraternity. I remember my quote unquote big brother in the fraternity sitting me down my freshman year and saying, you need to stop getting high every night.

And I needed a 22-year-old male that I could look up to. I didn't have a lot of male involvement in my life to tell me that. My first boss was a great guardrail for me. Young men need guardrails more than young women, quite frankly. Where young women get them, when a young woman is in a relationship, she reinvests oftentimes a lot of that energy into her friend network, into her professional life.

When a man's not in a relationship, he oftentimes reinvests it in video games, and porn, and he sequesters from society. And a tremendous guard rail for young men that they're not getting is a relationship. Okay, Scott, I think a relationship is one thing. My husband, interestingly enough, was raised by a single mother but had great male role models in his grandfather and his uncle, so I actually get concerned about how little trauma he has. That's my worry with him. But he has this incredible group of male friends. They're like really tight and they've all become dads at the same time and they take

their kids out together. And I'm really struck by how much he invests time in his friendship. And even in that group of men, there's about seven to eight of them, a couple of them aren't married yet, but they're still involved. So if there's a birthday, they'll fly in, et cetera, et cetera. I kind of rub up against the idea that having a mate is the only arena these men can find care because I see a lot of women marry men and they're like, now I have someone to babysit. Isn't there a way that we can encourage young men to invest in their friendships and in a brotherhood

and in their communities in a way that means even if you don't have a romantic relationship, you still have a really rich and fulfilled life? Because I just, this world where my daughters are going to grow up, and okay, the man does have a job or whatever, but she's going to have to look after him all the time, and if she doesn't, he falls off the rails. I'd rather it be a man who has a really rich interior life

and social network, and if he's married or not, or if he has a girlfriend or not, it doesn't matter. It's not as socially devastating. I think you're talking about the way the world should be, not the way it is. Or the way we can perhaps make it. That's very nice. So, the reality is-

I'm not an optimist, I'm just saying that we have a- But we have that in common. Yeah. That's very nice. So the reality is- I'm not an optimist. I'm just saying that we have a- But we have that in common. Yeah. I see why you guys, why you're referring. A 30-year-old male that hasn't lived with a woman or been married has a one in three chance of becoming a substance abuser. And a strong friend network is incredibly important. But without a romantic relationship,

men have a tendency to not reinvest in their social network and their professional lives the way that women do. You clearly have figured out that male friendship is really important for men. They open up to other men. They can express, the people who have the most job prospects are the most social.

They have an outlet with each other. Do you think in general though that women, once they get married, are really supportive of men spending more time with their friends? I think it depends on the friends. I like my husband's friends. Okay, most women see a guy spending more time with their mates as a threat to the relationship. In addition, corporations don't want men spending a lot of time with their friends. They want them making more money.

This is different. I don't really like men. There's a boys club and they leave me alone. But the larger point you bring up is the following. One in seven men in America doesn't have a single friend. One in four men can't name a best friend. Damn, that's crazy. And we have what I would argue is a loneliness crisis.

And the most frightening thing for young men right now, in my view, is that the deepest pocketed, most talented companies in the world are trying to convince young men, especially, that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why go through the effort of trying to have friends and figure out the pecking order and your social currency when you can go on Reddit and Discord? And why, for God's sakes, would you ever go through the humiliation, the rejection, working out, having a plan, being funny, smelling nice, enduring rejection, feeling humiliated, figuring out a way to feel confident, showing the perseverance such that you can establish a romantic or a sexual

relationship when you have porn. So what we have is, I think, unfortunately, we're evolving a new species of asexual, asocial males. And they're the most dangerous people in the world. Very dangerous. Because, and I don't want to pathologize them. We have a tendency to say, oh, they're the school shooters. Actually, the people they're most dangerous towards is themselves.

They're much more likely to harm themselves and harm other people. But the one thing the most unstable violent societies have in common is a disproportionate amount of young men who have no economic or romantic prospects. And we don't like to have an ominous conversation around mating. The reality is women mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. And when dating apps are now where 50 to 60 percent of all relationships begin, the reductive analysis is the following. Can you signal resources and are you tall? Men have very few arenas to demonstrate excellence anymore.

If you talk to people who've been married longer than 30 years, 80 percent of them say one was much more interested in the other, and it was almost always the man was much more interested. But when there's no places when men aren't going into work, when men don't have third spaces, when they're not serving in the military together, they have no place to demonstrate kindness. He was funny. I liked his hands.

He was great at what he did. And so as a result, we have this dating environment where the top 10% get literally all of the interest and the bottom 90% are just shut out. And then they become very prone to really ugly voices that say it's a woman's fault. They're much more prone to misogynistic content. They're much more prone to nationalist content. So figuring out environments where more people can meet and more men, quite frankly, can demonstrate excellence such that they can get through the finer filter of mating that women have.

The greatest innovation in history, it's not the iPhone or the semiconductor, it's the American middle class. And fundamental to that innovation was that seven million men returned from World War II. They had demonstrated excellence in uniform. We gave them enough money so they could afford a home. We gave them jobs and they became very attractive to a lot of women and we started the baby boom. And we had such wonderful prosperity that American liberal households said,

let's bring women into this prosperity. I know let's bring non-whites into this prosperity. And we got along because the majority of our leaders had served in the same uniform. So they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Republicans or Democrats. But unless we figure out a way to level up young people and find a place where they can meet and fall in love and meet and they have the economic wherewithal to do it, we're just going to continue to generate

the most dangerous person in the world, and that is a young man with no economic or romantic prospects. I coach a lot of young men, and one of the first things they talk about is they really want a girlfriend and I'm the first question I ask is would you have sex with you? Do you have a plan? You don't need to be a baller, you don't need to be rich, but do you have a plan? Are you going to vocational school?

Are you thinking about driving an uber and saving up so you can get a second car to have a second uber? Do you shower? Do you have good grooming? Are you funny? Are you willing to endure rejection? Are you willing to try really hard? You know, would you have sex with you? And there aren't enough men. How many times have we heard, I've got all these great women in my life. They're so attractive.

They're so shit together, but they can't find a man. No, they just can't find a man they want to mate with. And women are getting taller every year. They're becoming more economically viable. It's leading to a lot more divorce because quite frankly, men are not ascending in terms of picking up some of the slack logistically. So it's like, okay, you're no longer a provider. And by the way, it's not like you're really picking up the slack at home. So women are saying you're out. So for a lot of reasons, I think we have to figure out a way to have honest conversations with men around, okay, this is what women are attracted to, signaling resources.

That's the hard truth. You need an economic plan. Two, intellect. Are you interesting? Are you funny? Do you have interest in current events? And then the third thing, the secret weapon for men in mating that we don't talk a lot about is kindness.

Women actually want someone who's going to be kind because it means you're more likely to be good to her parents and good to your kids. Where do young people find mates in America right now? So when I think about every aspect of this problem, I think about where some of that potential is being leached out. I love video games with all my heart. What I hate now is video games have been made perpetual. So when you start when I started playing video games they ended. It was great you played a game and ended game over. You know what I mean? You finished Mario Brothers and that was it and games evolved and you played whatever it was you know you can you name it you name it you you could finish the games don't finish now and so like in a way, the first thing I think of is what you're saying is,

you cannot meet these people and you cannot go on to do these things if you're perpetually stuck in a game that's been designed by the way. It's been designed to keep you there, to keep you spinning, to keep you going. You also aren't going to think of being kind or funny when you're not around other people. We've shown time and time again, being with people makes you like those people, as in like it makes you be more like them. But if we don't have third spaces where people can go without money, for instance, how do we get that? Like where are you going?

I even ask people this all the time in New York and Manhattan. Anyway, I go, where can you go without money? Honestly? Yes, you can go to a park, but beyond that, like in the doldrums of winter in New York, where can you go? Yeah. You're from London? Yeah. 40% of nightclubs in London have closed down since COVID.

I know, I know. Young people don't have money and they're also drinking less. But you were talking about kind of, I think our economy has moved from an attention economy to unfortunately an addiction economy. And I think it's especially hard on an attention economy to, unfortunately, an addiction economy. And I think it's especially hard on young men who are more prone to addiction because they're more risk aggressive. I think basically our economy now, the kind of axis of evil is get people addicted to shitty food, to gambling, to porn,

and then hand them over to the addiction industrial complex. The most valuable company in Europe now is a GOP1 producer. And then if you think about young men, they're much more prone to addiction and especially gambling addictions, six and seven gambling addicts are boys, 50% of college age men bet on the Superbowl. And the net income of Las Vegas is down 40% this year

because everyone now has a casino in their pocket. And the crazy thing about gambling addiction is that the addiction with the highest suicide rate is gambling. Because if you had a meth addiction, we would know it and someone would weigh in who cared about you. You can get out so far in front of your skis with a gambling addiction and no one knows. Yeah, we talked about that on the podcast with Kaya, my friend, his younger brother

committed suicide because he was deep in gambling debt. No one knew until it was too late. No idea. And now this was even pre the apps in that way. And now it feels like, I mean, the apps run every sport now, the NBA, the NFL, they're almost sanctioned by the leagues now. They're the official betting partner of, do you know what I mean? So let me ask you this then, Scott. I like that you

said you love offering solutions. Let's try to think of a solution for the individual and a solution for the community. As Christiana eloquently put, I think even when we're talking about race, it's important to think of who's most affected. And ironically, when men are disaffected, women become the most affected. You see it in like the rates of violence that women will experience. They become these dangerous men. Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. So let's talk about it on the individual side.

There's a young man who's watching this right now. Yeah. And they go, Scott, I don't have connections. I don't see hope. I don't have connections. I don't see hope. I don't see anything. I'm watching this video on YouTube right now on my phone or on TikTok or wherever, wherever I am, what are like three steps I can take that just get me on the path to moving forward to purpose, kindness, and a space where I can show my brilliance.

I love that. So I try to walk the walk. I try and coach two young men at a time. And the people I coach, quite frankly, are struggling. You know, I get a lot of people who send me emails and say, will you be my mentor? And I talked to them, I'm like, you know, dude, you could mentor me. You know, I talked to some 24 year old working at Google and he's like, I need a mentor, I'm like, you're just fine.

What the first thing I do, I try and do it in person. Um, but oftentimes it's over zoom. I, the first thing I do, I try and do it in person, but oftentimes it's over Zoom. The first thing I do is the following. I say, open your, unlock your screen. I want to see your app time. And the first thing I do to put them at ease is I say to them, I gamble, I buy options. I'm not immune from gambling. I like porn.

I try to modulate my use, but I like porn because I want to put them at ease. I'm not going to judge them. And I say, okay, everyone has an advantage. You want to lean into your advantage. Your advantage as a young person is you have a lot of capital, but you have human capital. You have more time than money, but that's an advantage. We're going to find eight to 12 hours of human capital

of time in your phone. And it's so easy between TikTok, between X, between Coinbase, between you porn, in about three minutes, I can get them agreed to find eight to 12 hours a week of human capital. I'm like, all right, next week, we're gonna open your phone and you're gonna show me that you took eight to 12 hours of human capital

out of your phone. And we're gonna reallocate that precious human capital into three areas. One, you're gonna start getting fit. You need to be strong. If you're under the age of 30 and you're a man, you're blessed with an unbelievable physiology. Any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them. You'll be kinder. You'll feel better about yourself. Who breaks up fights at bars? Big, strong guys. Who defends our country? Big,

strong men. You want to feel better about yourself, you want to be less prone to depression, you want to feel good about your mating prospects, you need to get strong. We're going to work out three to four times a week, too. We're going to start making some money. You got a smartphone, you can make money in this economy. I don't care if you're a Lyft driver, I don't care if you're a task rabbit, go into a Panera, I was on the board of Panera. If you show up, when you're supposed to show up, three times in a row, you can be making 18 to 20 bucks

an hour in about a month. Because you're gonna get a taste for the flesh. You're gonna find out that money is amazing. And when you start making money, you start getting good at it. You start figuring out what are the behaviors that get rewarded for money? Where are the opportunities?

And then when you find when you buy shit, it gets your greed glands going. And you start thinking about, I'd really like to go on another date. I'd really like to be able to buy my mom something. You get a taste for the flesh of money. The way you make a lot of money is by starting to make a little bit of money.

No one starts off making a hundred grand a year. Most of us have had jobs where we're making no money. And then the third thing we're gonna do is two times a week, we're gonna find ourselves in the company of strangers in the agency of something bigger than ourselves. Church, non-profit, riding class, homeless shelter, any soup kitchen, and the agency of something else. And here's what we're going to do after a month of that, where the exercise, this is kind of 3A, I want you to approach a stranger and express interest in friendship or, and this is the

hard one, express romantic interest while making that person feel safe, right? Hey, do you want to watch the game this weekend? Let's go to the pub, Arsenal's playing Liverpool, cool, do you want to go? Hey, would you like to have coffee? An attractive woman or a woman you're attracted to. She's not dumb, she realizes, okay, you're probably interested in her. And that's not the goal, the goal is the following. The goal is no.

You're probably gonna get a no. They'll be nice, but they'll probably say no, right? And I'm gonna call you the next day and I'm gonna ask you if you're okay, and this is what you're gonna say, yeah, I'm fine. And that's the key. The key to success is no, because you're gonna realize,

you're gonna realize that the people who are successful, who have romantic partners, who have economic success, had a shit ton of nos to get to that point of success. This is the scariest stat I've read. Fifty-one percent of 18 to 24-year-old males have never asked a woman out in person. Think about that. They don't have the confidence or the skills to approach a woman and ask her out. That's it. The goal is the no. Because you get enough nos, eventually you're going to get a yes. I can't tell you how much rejection I've endured from women. And the reason I am with them, a really high character, hot person, is because I got comfortable with no. I have a question, Scott. I love the recommendations you get, you've given to men. As a parent,

there's parents at home listening to this, they're raising like preteen adolescents. What are the things that they can do to kind of push their sons along the right track? Is it delaying giving them a smartphone? Is it putting them in clubs? Not all boys are athletic. Do you know what I mean? No, I'm laughing because my mom made me work at home. Oh, so you had like- No, no, to what you're saying. And I just laughed thinking of it now because of what you asked and what you said. My mom, I think, intuitively sort of figured it out. I couldn't

get a job at a Panera. South Africa was different in that way, but she made me work at home. So she went, there are tasks and things that we need done and like, you know, some are physical. Yeah, but she paid me and she was like, this is your... And then she made me pay rent to live in the house. No, really. And she was like, this is your portion of groceries. Even, and it was this weird cycle, even though she was giving me them. And I remember asking her, I said, this is ridiculous.

The money's going back to you. You're giving me the money that I'm then giving back to you to then have the thing. And she said, yes, honey, that's all money in the world. She said, that's literally what it's going to be. Your company is going to give you the money that you're then going to buy their product with and give it back to them. And then you're going to give the government tax that they're going to then give you back with a road.

She said, that's how money works. I want you to get used to the reality of it, but I'm sorry. That's, it just made me think of that. So I want to be clear. Do as I say, not as I do. I have not figured this out. I have kids, my kids have done really well, but I... Well, then you have figured something out. Well, but to be clear, they have at different parts of their life struggled with device addiction. You think of anyone who understands technology, it's me. I have kids who sneak into the bathroom and are on TikTok

and have to bang on the door and say, start masturbating, get off your phone. But look, the basics, right? I think the key for parents is what I call, I think quality time was something invented by executives who weren't spending a lot of time with their kids. I think the key is garbage time. I'll always take my kids, drive them somewhere because what I find the moments of

real value and real emotional connection, unfortunately, happen totally randomly. Yeah. You can't force them or predict them. You're taking your kid to school and he says, I asked this girl out. I'm like, what happened? And he talks to you about it.

I don't think there's any replacement for just a lot of time. And then what you were talking about chores, I've done a terrible job with that. I think sports and fitness is really important for kids. I think kids, especially boys, are like dogs. A tired boy is a better behaved boy. I think they just need to sweat and they need, I mean, I have boys so I'm not as in touch with what girls need. And then the other thing that I've had trouble figuring out

is letting them fail. My son was going to a party at the Westfield Mall, my kids are really into malls at 14, and it ends up there's two Westfields in London, and I got an Uber and I sent him to the wrong one. Was it the Shepard's Bush one? Yeah, I sent him to the wrong one. Oh, the Shepard's Bush one, yeah. So sent him to the wrong one. I love the Shepard's Bush one.

Yeah. So immediately, it's like his mom wants to call MI6. He's texting me, Dad, you're an idiot. His mom calling me, I can't believe you did this. And finally, I blew up and by accident did the right thing. I said to my kid, I'm like, you have an Uber app, you have Google Maps, you have an Oyster card, figure it out. I'm done. Mom, he's going to be just fine. When I was my kid's age,

I used to leave my mom's house with a Schwinn bike and Abba Zabba bar and 35 cents, and I would literally come home 14 hours later. I had to navigate bullies, I had to navigate stray dogs, and I failed a lot. And I realized this is absolutely the right thing to do. Jonathan Haidt, who's my colleague, he summarized it perfectly, we overprotect them offline and we

underprotect them online. I am trying to do a better job of letting my boys fail. All right, that's a bad idea. If you ask my advice, I'll right, that's a bad idea. If you ask my advice, I'll tell you it's a bad idea. But okay, have at it. You think you can go to soccer practice without shoes? Just see how that works out. Have at it.

I'm trying to do a better job of letting them fail because if you look at what happens at the freshman year at NYU, we have real issues now around depression and self-harm. And it's for two reasons. One, and this is Jonathan's Valleywick, because they're on social media and they have a lack of self-esteem, especially girls. And two, we have created so much bulldozer parenting and concierge parenting that we've

used so many sanitary wipes on their lives that they don't develop their own immunities. And they show up to freshmen at college and they get their heart broken or they get their first C and they literally freak out. So by the time I got to college, I was like, for you, I had failed a lot. And I had thick skin, not thick skin, but I had calluses. So I'm trying to do chores, athletics, a ton of garbage time and letting them fail. But I want to be clear, I struggle. I have outsized emotional reactions. I get too angry at my kids. I say things I shouldn't. I overprotect. I underprotect. I'm not. I am still trying to figure it out.

We're all trying to figure it out. And that's why we're here. There you go. Scott Galloway. Thank you very much, man. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for braving the journey. That was fun. This was really amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much. What Now with Trevonoa is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevono Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodie Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle, Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another

episode of What Now? Thanks for watching!